Nylon Staps !

D beatty

Well-known Member
We have had the discussions before on here about nylon straps for tire downs (Pros and cons). What happened below is why I will never use nylon straps on anything with wheels.Today in Indiana on a major interstate highway a one ton dually pickup pulling a 50 foot gooseneck trailer loaded with three vehicles rearended a semi that was stopped because of accident ahead of them. The three vehicles on trailer(nylon straped ) catapulted off trailer. One vehicle traveled 53 downa flatbed into back of the cab of semi and other two one on each side of semi. Sorry to say the driver of pickup did not survive the accident.
 
I know nothing is fool proof. But this is why i use nothing but transport grade chains and ratchet binders on my tractors.
 
Unfortunate to hear...
I guess the first question that comes to mind is: How did the pickup driver not see a stopped semi?
I'm thinking that it couldve been avoided.
 
That we will never know but he should have seen the line of traffic that was in front of trucks that were stopped. The thing is all three vehicles came of trailer and they were nylon straped not chained. I have seen worse accidents that had heavier vehicles that were chained and they never moved.
 
I do use the nylon straps quite a bit but never for hauling a vehicle. At a minimum, when hauling a vehicle, the rear of the vehicle should be fastened with chains. The way it's written though, none of the cars landed on the top of his truck. I think he simply hit the 80,000lb truck too fast. By the sounds of it too, the trailer hitch or the truck hitch broke, which made things even worse. Those straps breaking could actually be a lifesaving feature.
If the hitch broke, I can see a lawsuit coming on. Depending on how many straps he had on each vehicle, that in it self is a concern. He likely had 4 on each vehicle, with a WWL of 3330 lbs. He had more than twice the strap he needed.
Link
 
I use 2 adn 2.5" straps... but I tend to go overboard.

IE. 4 straps for 4 corners PER machine, PLUS a strap over the tranny/center, PLUS a strap for each portion over 10' PLUS a strap for each attached implement including mowers, hoes loaders.. etc.

I use straps with a laod rating that would cover the entire machine. IE. 10k straps or 20k straps

You CAN strap something with fabric straps and do it right. yuo just HAVE to do it right.

lastly... they don;t last forever.. adn sun degrades them. and fraying kills them.

I retire mine about every 2 years and toss frayed ones into the strap bucket for securing stuff that does not go on hiway. IE.. farm wagon tie downs.. etc.
 
I would bet they were only strapped on one wheel and that wheel was a front tire.
The force of the flipping car broke the small strap.

I went by a boat dealer last Saturday and seen a guy that came to pick up a new boat he had bought.
This boat was big enough that it was sitting on a 3 axle; 15,000 gvw trailer.
He showed up in a F150 two wheel drive and got mad when the dealer refused to allow him to take the boat off the lot.
 
i X my chains when i haul vehicles and when i leave to get anything i carry 24 chains and 24 break over boomers and a couple of two inchs straps just if i run short of chains and i have
 
All the automobile transporters that I know are being forced to go to over the wheel straps. They are not allowed to hook to the frames(unibodys) any more due to wrinkled quarter panels and and bent components due to the overtightining of the rachet chains.I have seen pictures of car haulers,in towing and recovery magazines, with ten cars on them turned over and not a single car came off.
 

The same would have happened with inadequate chains and would not have happened with adequate straps. You need some significant criteria. I know a fellow named Beatty who died two years ago of a heart attack. Does that mean that you will die this year of a heart attack?
 
I drove for a commerical freight freight line for 38 years and in the 38 years I have seen dumped loads and loads in accidents that came off trailer and the majority of them were straped down loads. I know you have to put chains and straps of correct size and make sure they are pulled down properly. Several weeks ago on my way to see daughter and grand kids a pickup pulling a trailer with 2 vehiclles on it and each vehicle only had one 2"strap holding it on trailer. I have seen trailers with cargo with chains but no binders.
 
Sound has a GREAT idea that I never thought about before.. although i use chains for skidloader, etc. I use straps for hay and light equipment like a rake. BUT never thought of the fact of replacing every few years..some of the ones I have are at least 10 years old and have been in sh1t and moisture at sometime.. Good advise...Cheap preventive insurance..
 
i forget where i read it. but there was a list somewhere that listed lifespan for PP and nylon straps, and lifespan in sun. apparently sun kills PP fast.. and nylon by itself has a limited working lifespan.

I use 5g buckets with lids to store them in.. keeps em dry too.

frayed ones go on hay trailers and such.

I have pretty much stopped buying anythig under 20k rating. not much $$ savings to go lower.. usually once a year one of the farm stores will have a blowout sale on straps and I'll go buy 5-6 at a time. On my average haul of a tractor with a mower or laoder.. i'm using 6-7 straps. overkill is better... If nothing else it shows due diligence vs negligence.
 
Guys, your missing something here. Chains or binders have a load rating. But when you smack into something and you stop dead your putting more load on those chains and binders then the rating. We have had equipment with proper chains on and just slamming the brakes on for an emergency brake chains. I'll give you an example, you pick an 7 ton object with a seven ton cable you are ok but if you let it fall and catch it the cable is going to break. It doesn't hurt to go a size over just in case. I personally like chains better but that's just my opionion and I do use binders for some things.
 
you also need to look at speed in this also. if you driving 55 and hit something at a sudden stop it is not as bad as 75 to 80 and have a sudden stop either. speed is also a factor or this sort of things happening also
 
when designing a bridge deck we used 30% of the vehicle weight for momenton from braking hard and applied that load to the supports--it was called longitudinal force
 
I think the WLL of a chain is 1/3 of the break strength. Same as a strap.
That's why the regulations call for more WLL pulling rearward than forward on the load, in case you run into something bigger than you.
 
Speed is a big thing, with all these high powered diesels out now everybody thinks that because they can run 80mph with 10k lbs they should. I never go over 55 with anything heavy behind the truck gives you way more reaction time to all the morons on the street who don't appreciate what it means to be towing a load.
 
http://nwigazette.com/2014/03/25/fatal-accident-closes-i-65-northbound-this-morning/

dually driver was at fault, looks like either the gooseneck hitch or trailer coupler broke and the trailer crushed him to death. talking about nylon straps is arguing semantics. I've driven 1M miles in 46 states and 2 countries and never seen as many fatal accidents as I have on I65 in Indiana.
 
Couldn't have been said better. I never go over speed limit loaded and under if loaded and in heavy traffic.
 
(quoted from post at 09:39:30 03/30/14) http://nwigazette.com/2014/03/25/fatal-accident-closes-i-65-northbound-this-morning/

dually driver was at fault, looks like either the gooseneck hitch or trailer coupler broke and the trailer crushed him to death. talking about nylon straps is arguing semantics. I've driven 1M miles in 46 states and 2 countries and never seen as many fatal accidents as I have on I65 in Indiana.

I agree about the semantics. He was killed by the failure of the trailer or hitch, and there is the appearance of a very high speed impact, most likely due to driver inattention. Absolutely no fault of straps, because chains most likely would have needed to be twice what is required by law to hold up in such a strong impact.
 
If its on tires or can roll like concrete pipe or coil of steel its chains only, nylonstraps are made for lumber and things like that and if you read rule book if they are faded beyond point where you can not physically read mfgs rating legal load rating for a nylon strap is greatly reduced, important also to keep these tight, get slack in a chain n punch breaks now you have two short chains instead of only one. i love to go down road and see an idiot towing a trailer w a bobcat or similar equipment on trailer with either straps or loose chains going 80 mph they can go right ahead, kinda like chlorine in the gene pool.
 
A 3" strap is 5,000lb. workload- 20,000lbs. breaking strengh. The 2" strap is 3,335 lb. workload. The 3/8 grade 70 chain is a 6,600 lb. workload and 26,400 lb. breaking strengh. These are the numbers for DOT approved straps and chains.
 
If you read the rule book, as you said, you will see that if the load is under 10k pounds, the only thing you need is tie downs that exceed the weight of the load. Nothing is stated about straps or chains. I am pretty sure the cars in the original story were under 10k pounds. So 3333# WLL straps on each tire would be legal in this instance.

Now if they were adequate, that would up to the manufacturer and DOT. But the load was probably secured legally...
 
wow this is very unfortunate. Sounds like speed of impact was the big thing here. I use straps, on my small Kubota 2x10,000 and it only tips at 2400 lbs. when hauling vehicles I use 1 per corner with a chain added to the rear to prevent the truck from coming through the back of my cab if I were to rear end someone. to eject 3 cars more than 53' it sounds like even with chains the hitch would have broke or the anchor points themselves would have gave.
 
Nylon straps had nothing to do with causing the accident.

Nylon straps had nothing to do with those vehicles flying off the trailer.

Gravity and forward momentum did ....

Those vehicles would have left the trailer
with chain binders ....

You have no point to make ....

If you do not understand that .....
 
you also have to look at what was said earlier. the hitch broke and crushed the driver. so this is what i think, if these vehicles or whatever was strapped with chains or straps and was done correct and held the load on the trailer dont you think that the hitch would giveaway at some point from the weight on the trailer and the impact speed. all this factors in this pic. there is always something that will give with a certain amount of stress or weight on it.
 

Saw this today.....don't think 1 - 2" STRAP around the axle would keep this on the trailer in a panic stop.


mvphoto5734.jpg
 
(quoted from post at 16:40:49 04/04/14)
Saw this today.....don't think 1 - 2" STRAP around the axle would keep this on the trailer in a panic stop.


mvphoto5734.jpg

Looks like at least 3" to me. Should be well within both working and breaking load, though I would want two myself.
 

Whether 2 or 3 it is still only routed over the round axle tube, brake lines etc. & no way to stop it from sliding side ways even if the strap held.

Oh, and they did have one on the front in the same manner.
 
(quoted from post at 00:40:49 04/05/14)
Saw this today.....don't think 1 - 2" STRAP around the axle would keep this on the trailer in a panic stop.


mvphoto5734.jpg

so much money, so little taste in both those trucks. imagine the two cylinders I could have for what that guy has in those POSs.

I pulled a regular flatbed for years and now pull a stepdeck occasionally. the rule I was taught was chains on steel, 4" straps on anything else, x-chain or x-strap whenever possible. there is a proper way to tighten 4" straps using a winch bar, not many people seem to know it. I hauled lots of iron pipe, aluminum, lumber using only straps. I hauled a lot of new Deere equipment using only straps but they always used wheel chocks nailed to the deck. I put a chain through anything that had a hitch on it like a big air seeder or disc.

DSCN7007.jpg
 

Yep, same way when I was hauling heavy also. It always took me awhile to tie a load but it never moved on the road.
 
I hauled freight for 38 years and saw more freight dumped or broke loose from trailer with straps than chains. Straps have give to them where chain stays tight no give if bond down right.
 
I pulled a flat bed for 19 years used straps for most things seldom used chains. How many times have you had a binder that you were either a link too tight or too loose. Straps done right work well most are not and flop around
 

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